Episode 80 — The Rowboat Becomes a Sailing Ship
At that moment, Kim Iseo's mind was nothing but chaos.
What was Ham A-yoon?
Winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition.
She belonged to an entirely different order from the frauds who borrowed the name of a competition whenever it suited them, for no purpose but to stage some contest of their own. She had won the dream stage held once every three years in Leeds itself, on British soil.
...My head hurts. This is nothing like what I thought.
Go Taemin had mentioned Ham A-yoon before, but Kim Iseo had been certain a line was already drawn with that side. She had never imagined Ham A-yoon's camp would want the role of Kim Sohee this badly. The problem was that Ham A-yoon was simply too large a figure.
From the very start, the reason behind her one-person agency was a little different. An ordinary one-person agency lacks three things: money, power, and connections. Acquire those three by degrees, let the operation swell, and in time it goes through the formalities of leaving the one-person agency behind. For everyone else, such an agency is only a passage they move through for a while.
Ham A-yoon's was a different idea entirely.
In practice, she's on the same footing as Director Go Taemin.
Ham A-yoon had already stood at the peak of a field. If some variety program assembled a Masters Special and seated Go Taemin in the directors' chair, Ham A-yoon could take the piano seat right beside him and it would not be awkward in the least. She was a corporation that walked around on its own two feet. Only when she belatedly set out to act had she realized she needed an agency, and so she had simply founded one herself.
That agency, AWA Entertainment, had no further need to grow its strength. It was already far too strong. Nor was there any reason to sign anyone else. Ham A-yoon alone was enough.
This situation isn't good.... No. A crisis is an opportunity.
She pushed the fluster aside for the moment. As CEO, Kim Iseo began to hunt, breathless, for a masterstroke that could turn even this into something useful to Sua. It was not difficult. She had a standard of her own.
The thing that had kept her alive in this business was order. Even in the most tangled circumstances, if she laid down a few priorities, a way through had always appeared. Her thoughts pulled taut and began to turn.
In any case, Director Go Taemin took Sua's side. That matters a great deal. Then the best move, right now, is...
To take one step back.
The moment we step back, the other camp will see a newcomer who knows how to be modest, and Director Go, who already holds Sua in regard, will offer some other role. And if that happens...
A bulb flashed on in Kim Iseo's head.
...A crisis becomes an opportunity. We take part in Director Go's film, we make no enemy, and we come away with a filmography that stands alongside Ham A-yoon's. That's an absurd amount of gain.
Starting Tomorrow, Crescendo had roles to spare. The moment they let go of Kim Sohee, Sua could pocket every kind of benefit, and safely. There was no reason not to.
This is why the order matters.
Insist on seizing everything you want, and you must accept wounds all over your body, or stake your life. Yield only what ought to be yielded, and in the end don't you get what you wanted? This, too, was the very secret by which she had quietly kept Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil under her wing, and the reason she herself had survived in this industry.
Yes. That was why she had moved to stop Sua. She had meant to return to the van first and explain it one step at a time.
An unforeseen variable drove straight in and jammed the works.
Sua's single sentence struck her ear like lightning. Sua had declared that nothing but Kim Sohee would do, and with that, Kim Iseo's plan collapsed without a single warning. No. She was going to push it that far? Here?
"...!"
Kim Iseo stared at Sua, eyes gone wide. But the moment ran on without so much as a gap for her to cut in, a sharp exchange passing back and forth like spear testing spear.
"Even when your turn comes, you won't be able to play at this level. You know that? A-yoon's a competition winner. There's no point in trying. You don't have to set the long beside the short to know which is which."
"The director said he never actually gave a firm answer. All you've got is backing from the production team, isn't it? Why don't we set the long beside the short. Once. Fairly."
It was already something else entirely from Kim Iseo's plan, and it had skewed a long way from her theory as well. She believed flexibility was better than firmness. Bend, and you can give just enough to ride out the wind and the waves; stay rigid, and the damage you take is that much greater. Above all, when a truly great danger comes, there is the risk of simply snapping.
This is bad...!
And yet Sua, caught in the flick of Kim Iseo's glance, looked firmer than anything. She understood at once. It was a will that would rather break than bend.
Kim Iseo thought in a rush.
What do I do? Do I step in and stop her, even now?
However strong Sua's will might be, charging straight through did not feel like a good choice. It was not only the matter of someone coming to bear a grudge against her.
No. It's obvious. I have to stop her, even now.
Piano. The people Sua had faced until now had competed on acting alone, so it had been fine. To quarrel with Ham A-yoon with music as the ground of the fight was far too unfavorable a field.
But then a thought caught Kim Iseo by the ankle.
...That scent.
It was brief, and yet so fierce she could never forget it. The scent that had captivated her in Sua. Had that not been Sua's unyielding scent as well? For a moment, Kim Iseo shut off the part of her mind that judged a situation in cold blood, and began to repeat to herself only what Sua was to her.
Whenever Sua acts like this, she has always had her reasons. And not once has it ended badly.
A few further clues surfaced after that. They were the things she had watched again, back when they visited the sound team. Come to think of it, hadn't Sua always had a musical streak? Could there be a past tied to the piano as well?
No. She handled instruments well, too, on top of everything else?
It was an absurd assumption. And yet, once the subject of it was Sua, it no longer seemed impossible. Besides, no one was even expecting her to play as well as Ham A-yoon.
...If she can only handle it decently? It might be all right.
Kim Iseo made her decision at once.
Yes. If no one else, I have to believe in Sua. I, at least.
This opponent was a tiger larger than any before. But she had already climbed onto a tiger's back once, chasing after Sua, and there was no reason a second time should be beyond her. Kim Iseo closed her fist tight, and with it the resolve to put her faith in Sua.
Ham A-yoon's one-person agency, AWA Entertainment. The chief manager, ball cap tugged low, was dumbfounded.
He had worried they might try to beat her fee down, but Ham A-yoon had said Director Go Taemin was not that sort of man. Honestly, the chief manager agreed, and so he had come all this way in the spirit of giving that trust a try.
However.
This... no matter how I turn it over, it's a lowball.
Even if Director Go Taemin had not intended one, the people around him might well attempt it. And the moment he took in the scene, he was certain he had been right after all. The decisive thing was Lee Sua's looks, and her very presence. A face that put just the right pressure on whoever stood opposite her. Still, there was no reason to be cowed by appearances. This side, AWA, held none other than the master pianist Ham A-yoon.
Rather, his eyes went to Sua's hands.
...Does that make any sense?
Beautiful. Long, pale fingers, like something blown from glass. The problem was that there was not a single callus on them. Hands like those were impossible if she had practiced the piano even once. The hands of anyone who means to rule the piano are blotched with every wound and scar of glory and shame, because whoever seeks to master it is bound to pay that price. The remaining clues fitted together without much trouble.
The chief manager narrowed his eyes at the small-framed CEO.
Kim Iseo of Mystic Entertainment. Is she the author of this?
He knew of her, to some extent. Word was that across countless negotiations she had never once made a deal at a loss, and guessing from that, it was not difficult.
This lowball looks like something worked out by Kim Iseo and the production people standing with her. They've got nothing to lose over there.
The pieces clicked into place well enough.
If we refuse to be lowballed, Mystic will be thinking of slipping Seo Yeon-ju in as the substitute, won't they? And if our side does get lowballed, they will have counted that as a gain all on its own....
Haa. The chief manager let out a long, heavy sigh. Not the first time. Not the second, either.
Ever since Ham A-yoon had begun to act, the other side had always suffered for it, and for no reason but this: even they had never properly known what to set her fee at. And this was a film by the master Go Taemin, no less. Every kind of meticulous maneuvering went on beneath the surface, and it was exhausting. On broad and fertile ground, fights over territory are bound to run fierce.
Even so, he soon gathered himself. This lowball, he would absolutely not take.
...Hm?
He was, of course, about to be made to swallow that shock whole.
Everyone else's mind was busy too, each for a reason of their own. The production staff who had never visited the set of Special Task Force 808 could see no particular reason not to use Ham A-yoon, while those who had experienced Sua's acting were already bewitched by her.
And so, now.
Ton—
Ton—
Ton—
The moment Ham A-yoon pressed three keys, one after another, she was curious. What had that expression been, the one Sua had turned toward her playing? Was her musical cultivation deep? Had she, like Ham A-yoon's own father, seen something A-yoon herself did not know?
Or was it only the behavior of someone so ignorant that A-yoon was merely thinking too hard, caught as she was in an old memory?
Sua, for her part, was only looking at the Special Privilege.
001 — Kim Sohee (Grade A)
002 — Park Min-seo ( ? ? ? )
003 — Lee Seung-myeong (Grade F)
She had no idea why Park Min-seo's grade was a question mark, but every role besides Kim Sohee was an F all the same. If she was to take part in Starting Tomorrow, Crescendo, she had no choice but to take part as Kim Sohee.
A master's work is like a wide ship. And with every will colliding like this, the age was a turbulent one. If those wills did not come together, the ship could not go forward. It would only dry out, slowly, and die upon the empty sea, or else the only fate left to it would be to meet a violent wave and break.
But then.
Bang—!
Ham A-yoon stumbled and caught herself on the keys.
"...G-sharp?"
That was what Sua said.
"I heard the A, and as far as the F..."
"The last one. Was it D?"
Every gaze, from everyone holding an oar of their own, gathered on Sua, and shock came with it. Of course it did. In their minds, at least, the premise had sat firm that Sua possessed no musical cultivation whatsoever. So this was the moment she broke every prejudice and offered a new possibility. The moment she proved she had a musical gift.
It meant a great deal.
On the rowboat they had been driving forward by oar, a sail sprang up out of nowhere. Let a boat become a sailing ship, and oars are no longer needed. It only goes on, given over to a wind that cannot be refused.
Starting Tomorrow, Crescendo.
The rocking ship's center of balance was, little by little, finding itself.